350 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK IV. their ancient habitations) without some emotion and pity. IS^ow to shew 

 that many such disasters as that which befel Erisichthon have liappened 

 to tlie owners of places where goodly trees have been felled, I cannot 

 forget one, who giving the first stroke of the axe with his own hand, and 

 doubtless pursuing it with more, killed his own father by the fall of the 

 tree, not without giving the uncautious knight (for so he was) sufficient 

 warning to avoid it. And here I must not pass by the groaning-board 

 which they kept for a while in South wark, drawing abundance of people 

 to see the wonder ; such another plant had been formerly, it seems, ex- 

 posed as a miracle at Caumont, near Thoiilouse, in France ; and the like 

 sometimes happens in woods and forests, through the inclusion of the air 

 within the cavities of the timber ; and something of this kind, perhaps, 

 was heretofore the occasion of the fabulous Dodonean oracle. But how- 

 ever this were, methinks I still hear, sure I am that I still feel, the dismal 

 groans of our forests, when that late dreadful hurricane (happening on the 

 26th of November, 1703) subverted so many thousands of goodly Oaks ; 

 prostrating the trees, laying them in ghastly postures, like whole re- 

 giments fallen in battle by the sword of the conqueror, and crushing all 

 that grew beneath them. Such was the prospect of many miles in several 

 places, resembling that of Mount Taurus, so naturally described by the 

 poet, speaking of the fall of the minotaurs slain by Theseus : 



■ Ilia procul radicibus exturbata 



Prona cadit, late quaecumvis obvia frangens. 



The losses and dreadful stories of this ruin were indeed great, but how 

 much greater the universal devastation through the kingdom ! The public 

 accounts reckon no less than 3000 brave Oaks in one part only of the 

 forest of Dean blown down ; in New-Forest in Hampshire, about 4000 ; 

 and in about 450 parks and groves, from 200 large trees to 1000 of ex- 

 cellent timber, without counting fruit and orchard-trees sans number ; 

 and proportionably the same through all the considerable woods of the 

 nation. 



Sir Edward Harly had 1300 blown down; myself above 2000 ; several 

 of which, torn up by their fall, raised mounds of earth near twenty feet 

 high, with great stones entangled among the roots and rubbish ; and this 

 * Wocdtown. almost within sight of my dwelling, (now no longer * Wotton,) sufficient 

 to mortify and change my too great affection and application to this work, 



